“What did you do about it?” Grim asked. He did not look particularly interested, but Ayisha, standing upright in the dark behind Grim, leaned forward on her rifle with parted lips.
“Wallahi!” swore the Avenger. “It sounded like a strange request to come from Jimgrim. It sounded to me like a trap of some kind. So I sent fifty men, whom I could ill spare, and a man in charge of them who should have been commanding my right wing. Had he been with the right wing, there might have been another tale to tell about tonight’s affair. My brother Achmet. You know him? Like a rifle bullet is Achmet for quick thinking. I said to Achmet, if the sender of that message truly is Jimgrim, then stay and serve him with your fifty. But if he is not Jimgrim, catch him and bring him hither, or else feed him to the jackals; but better to bring him alive, for the amusement we may have with him.”
“It was very good of you, when you needed men so badly, to send your best wing-commander and fifty on the half-chance of helping me,” Grim answered gravely. “Let us call the account even between us, and begin all over anew.”
“Taib*—since you suggest it.”
(* All right)
I began to feel horribly uneasy, and I know Narayan Singh did, for he was holding his breath and letting it out between his teeth sibilantly. I knew Grim was playing a hunch by the way he smiled, and spoke slowly with his eyes not quite wide open; you learn to recognize a man’s game after you have played with him a while and watched him in the climaxes. But hunches are fickle friends. If the Lion of Petra should have been killed by the Avenger’s brother, all our plan was worth nothing; and if he had been made prisoner, it looked like worse than nothing.
But Grim had to be quick. Before so very long now those fires of ours would begin paling in the dawn.
“Well then,” Grim said slowly, “do you wish me to act arbiter in this dispute between you and Ali Higg?”
“Yes; for he seems too strong for me.”
There was a long pause at that moment. Several shots were fired in the near distance towards the south. Shouting followed for two or three minutes; and then silence. I judged by the slow movement of his hands that Grim was horribly excited, but he had his voice under command.
“If I can call off that army, then, will you agree to retire from Abu Lissan at once, and not to invade Ali Higg’s territory for a period of three years?”
“Three years is a long time, Jimgrim.”
“Nevertheless, my condition is three years.”
There was another pause—the sound of a camel coming full pelt through the narrow streets—and then a disturbance in front of the door below.
“Make it one year, Jimgrim. I am a man of my word.”
“Three years; or I wash my hands of the whole business!”
The Avenger hesitated—stared at our fires for several seconds —seemed to review in his mind his own immediate resources —and was about to speak, when a brown-cloaked rifleman was ushered in a hurry up the stairs and advanced to deliver his message with hardly the form of salutation. He was out of breath, and brushed Ayisha aside as if he did not see her.
He was from the Avenger’s brother. He reported that the person representing himself to be Jimgrim had tried to decoy him and his fifty men farther afield, but had been cornered, because he and his handful of men were mounted on dead-weary camels. At the moment of the messenger’s dispatch the man, whoever he was, was parleying for terms, offering to surrender if his life was guaranteed him. So the Avenger’s brother had decided to grant that condition in order to save time; but there would be delay, because of those tired camels, which were, nevertheless, too good to leave behind. He hoped to bring in his prisoners before dawn, in time to take part in the offensive.
“Taib,” said the Avenger, and dismissed him with a wave of the hand.
Ayisha went and sat down in the circle of lamplight, with an air that I mistook for resignation. Her face wore that fatalistic expression that you read about and very seldom see. Ibrahim ben Ah, looking rather triumphant and decidedly shrewd, whispered to Grim, who shook his head. If you had asked me to play Grim’s hand that minute, I would have thrown the cards down, for the arrival of Ali Higg on the scene as a prisoner of war would be a joker that would upset every calculation. Yet Grim looked uncommonly contented, and the Avenger, whose turn it was to deal, dealt the joker into Grim’s hand.
“Inshallah, we shall have amusement, Jimgrim, when we confront you with the imposter!”
“Business before amusement, ben Saoud!” Grim answered. “Will you agree to the three-year term of peace?”
“But if I agree, how shall Ali Higg be held to it? Will he give hostages? What proof will the scoundrel give that he intends to keep his word?”
Ayisha’s eyes, that had been half-closed dreamily, opened wide at that, and the suspicion of a smile began to hover on her lips.
“Would a wife and fifty men do?” Grim inquired.
“The loss of fifty men would weaken him,” said the Avenger.
“And the wife knows his affairs, knows his strength and weakness, and moreover involves his personal honor,” answered Grim. “Do you not remember how the Prophet Mahommed required his follower Ali’s wife as a token of allegiance? Would even Ali Higg dare to make himself a by-word through all this land by breaking an agreement to confirm which he had given his wife before witnesses? If a man should lose his wife in battle, his honor would require him to seek revenge; but can he give his wife, and break faith afterwards?”
“And what does he require of me?”
“Three years’ peace.”
“And at the end of that?”
“A lot can happen in three years,” said Grim. “Let us plan for those, and leave the fourth in Allah’s lap.”
“Is the wife good-looking?”
“Judge for yourself,” Grim answered; and Ayisha rose to her feet. She looked less like a part of a bargain than the clever driver of one —dignified, alert, triumphant.
“Wallah! And you say she has a following of fifty men?”
“There are fifty who are willing to change sides along with her and bring their camels.”
“Taib! I agree!”
“To what?” demanded Grim.
“To a three-year truce.”
“Does that include personal immunity for Ali Higg? Do you undertake to lift no hand against him, and to take him at no disadvantage at any time during the next three years, beginning now, in return for a similar promise from him to you?”
“By Allah, why not? He marked my face, but I have his wife, and shall have fifty men! Yes, I agree. I promise. Why doesn’t the dog show himself and sign the bargain?”
“He shall,” said Grim.
“But when? Let my men go and bring him.”
“Men have gone for him already,” answered Grim. “He will be here presently. So you have passed your word? Between you and me, as man to man, in good faith? I may count on you to keep it?”
“In the name of Allah. By my beard and by the honor of my race,” the Avenger answered.
CHAPTER XI
“I see no sin in holding to my given word. Let Allah judge me!”
Dawn was just breaking when they brought in Ali Higg. Our